Those who attended Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's keynote address at the OpenWorld conference on Wednesday hoping to learn a wealth of new detail about the vendor's long delayed Fusion Applications likely left disappointed, but plenty of vital information was available throughout the week for those interested enough to pursue it.

Google's real-time search engine, which indexes and serves up status updates, messages and other public content from sites like Twitter and Facebook, now has its own Web address and contains new filtering capabilities.

Google has acquired Like.com, which offers a visual search engine for retail products, a deal aimed at boosting Google's shopping search capabilities and services like its Products engine.

Texas Instruments on Monday said it will start shipping a new dual-core chip for devices like smartphones and tablets later this year.

Apple launched the iPhone 4 Case Program app in the App Store a few days ago, and is expected to invest somewhere in the neighborhood of $175 million on the free bumper program aimed at reluctantly addressing reception issues with the iPhone 4. There is something that doesn't add up, though, about the timing that makes the program seem like a bait-and-switch designed to brush the problem under the rug.

EMC's announcement this week of plans to purchase data warehousing vendor Greenplum represents a harbinger of things to come for that market, as well as related areas like BI (business intelligence) and data integration, according to some analysts.

Hearsay in recent days that Google is working hard on a project to better compete against Facebook has captured the attention of industry observers, who wonder what shape this initiative might take and what is its likelihood of success.

Though tech shares, just like company stocks in other sectors, have since April been battered by economic concerns, a strong rise in all major U.S. exchanges and indexes earlier this week shows that IT is playing an important part in helping investors stay hopeful for the rest of the year.

Apple's success in mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad could spill over into the TV segment if the company decides to make a push for devices with larger screens, analysts said on Friday.

CIOs and IT managers know they must address concerns like security, compliance, service levels and end-user resistance when moving to cloud-based enterprise software, but they must not overlook a critical area: the feelings of their IT staffers.

Dell CEO Michael Dell contends that mobile devices will never kill the PC. Instead, he envisions a future where users own an increasing number and variety of devices, each capable of looking like the other via desktop virtualization, served by virtual networks and the cloud.

Apple's refusal to allow Flash on the iPhone hurts innovation and is "like 1984 in a lot of ways," Adobe Systems' CTO said on Wednesday, implying that Apple has become the "Big Brother" it rebelled against in its iconic TV ad from that year.

Samsung Electronics will ship a multichip package later this quarter for smartphones that will include phase-change memory (PCM), an emerging technology that could ultimately replace memory types like NOR flash, the company said Wednesday.

The latest family of Intel microprocessors, code-named Sandy Bridge, will be in production by the end of this year, while desktops and laptops with the chips will likely be on world markets in early 2011.

A number of companies plan to ride Apple's coattails with tablet devices of their own.

Google's talk of a broadband network is likely to reignite debate.

MySQL separatists address Russia and China as EU assent on the deal grows likely.

SAP's attempt to convince users that its Enterprise Support service provides enough value to justify a higher price tag may drag on well into 2010.

Users of Facebook and Yahoo will find more ways to link their actions on those sites next year, as Yahoo prepares what it calls a deep integration of Facebook with services like Yahoo Mail and Yahoo News.

Social networking site Facebook has been blocked in Iran since Saturday, according to the country's opposition, as opposition voters increasingly turn to online tools like social networking to promote their candidates.